by John H. Fischer on October 22nd, 2009
On Monday evening during Wausau’s Public Health and Safety Committee meeting, there was a public hearing on some changes to Wausau’s housing code ordinances. The three changes were:
- Establishing a re-inspection fee if building inspectors have to constantly re-inspect a property for the same uncorrected violation.
- Making it a code violation to have a non-operational vehicle (which includes vehicles without proper registration) on a property unless it is in a garage.
- Requiring property owners who don’t live in Marathon County to have a registered agent for service of process within Marathon County.
These are just the first rounds of recommended changes coming to the City from a Task Force that was created at the request of the Mayor some time back. The Task Force was to “be composed of staff and elected alderpersons to study the issues and provide recommendations for a Code Enforcement Program that would ensure decent and safe housing for all City of Wausau residents.” – This statement, in quotes, comes from the Task Force recommendation sheet that was provided to the Committee at Monday’s meeting.
This Task Force consisted of Deb Hadley, Matt Kaiser, Lisa Rasmussen, Ann Werth, Roger Sydow and Tammy Stratz. Their first meeting was held on February 17th, 2009, and their last meeting was on June 23rd. In gathering information for their recommendations, they interviewed Anne Jacobson (city attorney), Cliff Ambriz (property inspector), Mark Sauer (municipal judge), Officer Max LaPorte (police dept) and Mindy Brandenburg (community development specialist).
NOTE: I did request the agendas and minutes from these meetings, but I was told that the City of Wausau feels that an ad hoc committee such as this one does not fall under the open meeting laws so no agendas were posted or “official” minutes taken.
The three proposed ordinance changes that went to public hearing on Monday were all recommendations of this Task Force. The first recommendation of the Task Force is to hire an additional property inspector. Understanding this is not in the budget, a further recommendation is to “work towards a program that would license all rental units which will pay for the additional inspector through these fees.”
I personally find it interesting that this committee has determined that licensing rental properties and using the fees to hire another building inspector will accomplish the goal of improving the quality of housing in Wausau. I also find it personally interesting that the Task Force came to this conclusion even though none of the interviews were done with rental housing providers. (And no, playing phone tag with me for two days doesn’t count.) As a matter of fact, in the meeting minutes from the September 21st, 2009, Public Health and Safety Committee minutes, when “Abitz questioned if this had been brought forward to any of the rental associations, Rasmussen indicated there were some public hearings scheduled and meetings with some of the neighborhood groups.”
In other words… NO! There was one public hearing scheduled (the one we had on Monday) and they want to get this to the Council and approved in November so that notices of the ordinance change requiring the agent be included with the tax bills. And, although I admire the work done by many of the neighborhood groups, I have yet to hear how any of those groups make an effort to include rental property owners.
In a conversation I had with Rob Mentzer of the Wausau Daily Herald, I explained that I understand why the City wants to create this requirement for an agent in county. It makes their job of serving notices easier. But it also creates additional expense. Who is going to be willing to be a registered agent to be served process (and possibly find their name on CCAP just because they are an agent)? What will they charge? How will adding an additional cost, which will most likely just be passed on to the tenants as rent, help make housing better? It may have the opposite effect. Houses and rental properties that are in distress and are being sold may now have a smaller pool of buyers, as out-of-county purchasers may not want to deal with this whole “registered agent” thing.
If the city has to serve process on an out-of-county owner, it may cost more. But in the eventual judgment, those costs get added on and can get recouped. I understand that out-of-state property owners adds another level of difficulty, but when the owner resides out of state, there is a state law (WI SS 704.22) that requires out-of-state residential rental owners to have a designated agent in-state, and that information should be on file with the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions.
Reasons given by the Inspections Department for wanting agents include how difficult it is to determine who owns the property. However, I have no problem getting owner information through a quick phone call to the Marathon County Treasurer’s office. Another reason for wanting a designated agent, is because often the owner is a corporation or LLC and you don’t know who to serve. However, I have no problem getting this information on the Department of Financial Institution website, as registered agents for corporate entities are maintained by that department and anyone can go on the website and get this information.
I hear talk that we need to do something about the slum-lords in this town – and I will agree. I spend a great deal of money to make sure that my housing units meet all applicable codes, and I want everyone to play by the same rules that I do. However, and the Inspections Department will agree with me, the slumlords are the minority. The vast majority of rental property owners comply with codes and provide safe housing.
Also, in my experience, there are two kinds of slumlords. There are those that are in it for the money and simply don’t care; and there are those who didn’t realize what they were getting into and simply can’t afford to care.
That first group we can take care of by just aggressively enforcing the ordinances that we currently have.
That second group might be able to be saved with education, guidance, and a culture of understanding, working together. and helping. Having the Task Force make recommendations without soliciting the input of rental housing owners flies in the face of a culture of working together, and creating an additional expense of having to find an in-county agent only takes away more money that the landlord could otherwise use for the needed repairs.
Two of the three recommendations, in my opinion, will help the goal of cleaning up Wausau properties. However, in regards to the agent thing, I have yet to understand how this will actually help. It will only create additional expenses for the good landlords – for the slumlords, this is just another code that they will chose to ignore.
by Dino Corvino on May 21st, 2009
On May 14th something exceptional happened at a local committee meeting. We have it from three sources that at the last CISM (Capital Improvements and Street Maintenance Committee) turned into both a verbal, and some might say a physical, conflict.
The issue on the table, as you can see in these minutes, was a PEACE statue or memorial a recent exchange student wanted to create and donate for placement in the triangle grass by the courthouse between the library and United
Way office — intersection of River Drive, Washington and First streets.
This discussion quickly deteriorated when first term councilman Matt Kaiser once again stated his objections to the piece of art based on the idea of it being controversial or possibly misunderstood. Mr. Kaiser also pointed out that we currently have memorials to fallen officers and fallen soldiers, and they are more “civic” in nature.
Around this time sources say long time councilman Ed Gale became, to use a phrase, impassioned in his reaction. Mr. Gale, according to the minutes, objected strongly, and an exchange happened. This exchange, according to sources, quickly turned personal and “intimidating” in nature.
It is also around this time that a watch belonging to Mr. Gale, made its way through the air. Reports differ as to whether or not this was thrown at Mr. Kaiser, or just thrown out of impassioned frustration.
The notes also mention that “Mr. Gale returned to his chair.” When asked, sources were unclear as to what that meant, save for the description of Mr. Gale standing up. Did Mr. Gale storm out of the room as we were told? The notes do not reflect that.
I have chosen to highlight this issue for a few reasons. One being to point out the nature of our city’s committee meetings. Apparently some real back and forth and discussion happens — sometimes watches even fly about the room.
Secondly, I highlight this to illustrate that our first term council people have already chosen to make their leadership felt. In this case Mr. Gale is a long standing figure on the city council, even having run for mayor as well as serving on the county board, and Mr. Kaiser took his political life in his hands and stood up to a man who is known to be a bit, shall we say, gruff.
Finally, while it is only 2009, it is clear that mayoral politics are already in play. Watercooler talk has Gale considering his run, as well as another member of the council deciding to run in the future. It is important to see that this behavior, while possibly acceptable in a councilman, is something we need to give thought to in regards to selecting a mayor, our ambassador to the world. People have already begun to put together strategies, and ‘Survivor-like’ alliances are being formed within the community as well as the professional staff within the city.
I do not want to portray this as a smacking of Mr. Gale. This is simply not the first time we have seen Mr. Gale be referred to as intimidating or gruff. I have often gone to City Council meetings simply to watch Mr. Gale and his fascinating levels of frustration. It is however the first time that watches have gone flying, and other councilpeople have become verbally intimidated by the process of back and forth. These actions taken by our councilpeople, not just Mr. Gale, have results in the community. We need to be more aware of these types of actions.
Also, it is fascinating the difference in the account put forth in the minutes below, to what people in the room have told me occurred. I am also told that the city creates an audio recording of these meetings, but when Citizen Wausau asked for such a record, we were told that they do not exist. I am unsure of a policy that would allow the city to deny us public records, no matter what the format, but as we have seen from the mayor and the Wausau Daily Herald, anything is possible. So, if you know if an audio record is made, we would love to hear from you.
CISM MINUTES
by John H. Fischer on March 15th, 2009
The debate continues… The debate about the war in Iraq? No. The debate about earmark spending in congress? No. The debate about bailing out banks and other large companies? No. I speak of course of the debate about what to do about Wausau’s three community swimming pools.
I should probably be clear on from what angle I look at this issue. Although I am not a resident of the City of Wausau, I own and manage quite a bit of property in the City; I look at the issue as a taxpayer. I don’t swim, I don’t know how to swim, I have very little desire to know how to swim. I in no way directly benefit from swimming pools, water parks or anything of that nature.
That being said, just because I see no personal use in this amenity does not mean that I do not acknowledge that others do. For a while, on the back bumpers of Everest Metro police cars they didn’t have “To Serve and Protect” but instead had “It’s About Quality of Life.” I fully agree.
For those unfamiliar, Wausau has three outdoor swimming pools distributed throughout the city. Over recent years, use of these pools has been on a steady decline while the costs to maintain them have been on a steady increase. The term that I like is “hemorrhaging cash”. The debate is do we continue to put money into the pools (based on their age, they are all in need of high dollar updates/repairs), do we abandon the pools for a centralized water park similar to those run by Weston and Schofield/Rothschild, or do we follow a completely different path?
One argument I hear often that I disagree with is that the Wausau pools should be closed because they don’t make money. The water parks run by some of the other Metro communities come very close to breaking even and from time to time, might actually have numbers in the black. I disagree with this argument because that is not the job of government. It is not the job of government to provide services that the market can provide. And if there was money to be made in swimming pools and water parks, private companies should take advantage of the profit-making opportunity. The job of government is to provide those services that have no way they can “make money” – such as “quality of life” amenities.
Parks don’t make money.
However, to be fair, parks don’t cost nearly as much to maintain as the pools do. It would be interesting to know that based on use, what does it cost per dollar for people who use some of the parks in town vs. what does it cost per dollar for people who use the pools? This is a number that we can probably never learn because the number of people who use the parks would be an estimate at best.
I understand that these neighborhood pools are about quality of life. I get that, they are amenities similar to parks and expecting them to cash flow is unreasonable. On the other hand, if an amenity’s costs are disproportionate to the number of people using that amenity, one needs to ask if the pools really do contribute to the “quality of life” in the City of Wausau as a whole.
The City Council has agreed to lower admissions to $1.00 with the hope of increasing the use of the pools. Again, the object isn’t to make more money – the object is to increase use. If the fees are lowered and things like concessions and more chairs are added and use of the pools continues to decline – it should be clear that maybe this amenity does not contribute to the quality of life.
So then what? Wausau builds an aquatic park like Weston’s? Well that is just silly. How many aquatic parks does one metro area need? Weston has a big one. Schofield/Rothschild have one… let’s not forget the Lodge at Cedar Creek, though this is a for-profit privately owned one, it still counts.
One of the biggest wastes of taxpayer money in this metro area is duplication of services.
What is the answer to the pool question? I don’t know… but I do think that the decision to hold off on multi-million dollar improvements and doing some little things to increase participation is a good way to go.
I would love to see partnerships between not only Weston-Schofield-Rothschild-Wausau-etc., but partnerships with the school districts, the UW, and other entities who have pools would be a wonderful thing.
I do believe though, that with decreasing the user fees and adding amenities and the “use it or lose it” publicity around the pools will make this summer critical. If the pools continue to see declining usage, I think even the strongest supporters of the neighborhood pools will have to concede to the writing on the wall.
